Toilet service


A toilet service is a set of objects for use at the dressing table. The term is usually reserved for large luxury sets from the 17th to 19th centuries, with toilet set or vanity set used for later or simpler sets. Historically, services were made in metal, ceramics, and other materials, for both men and women, though male versions were generally much smaller. The rich had services in gold, silver, or silver-gilt. The contents vary, but typically include a mirror, one or more small ewers and basins, two candlesticks, and an assortment of bowls, boxes, caskets, and other containers. One or more brushes and a pin-cushion, often as a top to a box, are often included. The sets usually came with a custom-made travelling case, and some services were especially designed for travelling.
The toilet service was the most important item of "dressing plate", as opposed to table plate, and was often a gift upon marriage; sometimes augmented on the birth of children. It was normally the personal property of the wife. The morning levée was sometimes a semi-public occasion for great persons in the early modern period, and the toilet service might be seen by many people.
The U.S. market for vanity sets had almost entirely disappeared by 1937 due to changes in women's lifestyles and associated simplified hairdos.

Terminology

The word toilet comes from the French toile meaning 'cloth', and toilette first came to mean the morning routine of washing, tidying hair, and shaving and making up as appropriate, from the cloth often spread on the dressing-table where this was done. This meaning entered the English language as toilet in the 17th century; only later did toilet start to compete with lavatory as a euphemism for the plumbing fixture. The Oxford English Dictionary records toilet in English from 1540, first as a term for a cloth used to wrap clothes, then from 1662 for a gold toilet service, and by 1700 for a range of related meanings, but not for a lavatory, which did not come into use until the 19th century.

Contents

The contents of a service were variable but the classical grouping had as its largest piece the mirror, usually decorated at the top with some form of crest. In the 17th century these were rectangular, usually oblongs in "portrait" format, though the Louvre mirror and the Lennoxlove service use a "landscape" format. The frame normally had a wooden framework holding the glass, over which the metal was fitted. In the 18th century oval mirrors began to be used, and later the introduction of dressing tables with built-in mirrors was part of the decline from fashion of the toilet service. Depictions in art, such as the Zoffany of Queen Charlotte, usually show that the elaborate crest at the top of the mirror has disappeared beneath the lace covers spreading to the sides, which are probably tied round it. These were used to pull over the service on its table when it was not in use, or when husbands or other inconvenient visitors appeared in the dressing room.
The service usually contained two fairly small candlesticks, allowing the face to be lit from below. There may also be "hand-candles", "chamber candles" or "chamber sticks", short, with a wide saucer-like base and a loop or handle. These were the last lights to be put out at night, and were carried in the hand. Candlestick makers were treated as a speciality within silversmithing, and the candlesticks may be made by different workshops from the other pieces, as may any snuffers, also regarded as a speciality.
File:Marriage A-la-Mode 4, The Toilette - William Hogarth.jpg|thumb|Detail of William Hogarth's Marriage à-la-mode: 4. The Toilette, 1743
The service often contains one or a pair of ewer and basin sets for washing. There is normally a number of other vessels of various sizes and shapes, some covered and others not, which go by a great variety of names, and whose purpose was perhaps always rather undefined. A variety of brushes might be included, and sometimes a small bell. In the 18th century glass and porcelain items might be mixed in with the silver ones. Services also might contain food plates and cutlery for breakfast or snacks in the bedroom or dressing room, or when travelling. One large type of bowl is connected with oatmeal, though it seems this might either be made into a facial, or eaten as porridge. Descriptions include items such as comb-boxes, glove-trays, soap-boxes, low tazze, salvers, ecuelles and others. The 48-piece German Schenk von Stauffenberg service contains several items for food and drink, including a teapot, and also items for writing, such as an inkstand.
The male service was much simpler, typically consisting of a shaving-bowl, ewer and basin, a soap-box, toothbrush holder, perhaps a tongue-scraper and some boxes and bowls. These started later, in the 18th century, when men began to shave themselves, or have a servant do it, rather than requiring a quasi-medical barber surgeon specialist.
In Mundus Muliebris, a satire on fashionable ladies published in 1700, by Mary Evelyn, the daughter of John Evelyn, the toilet service was described. Although by no means an insider at court, Evelyn was able to see the queen's toilet service and his diary records his admiring comments. In the poem:
In the 18th-century special dressing-tables with a fitted mirror began to be made, so removing the need for the traditional centrepiece of a service. Men also had special shaving tables, often on long legs for shaving standing up.
The full toilette did not always occur at the start of the day, but might be before going out or having a formal meal. In the Zoffany portrait of Queen Charlotte above: "... Father Time appears scythe-bearing on the clock, but the face reads exactly 2.30pm, which means that the Princes have finished their dinner and are visiting their mother, after she has dressed, while their governess waits in the room beyond. The Queen will dine with the King at exactly 4.00pm."

Packing a German service of 1743-45 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

History and style

Earlier examples of the component pieces existed, as is clear from documentary records and stray surviving pieces, but the toilet service as a large matching set of pieces seems to become common among the rich in the 17th century, and especially the France of Louis XIV. Sets of ewers and basins such as the Lomellini Ewer and Basin were a staple of display plate well before this, but the many paintings of the Toilet of Venus, for example by Rubens, show that until about 1650 even goddesses used mirrors with wooden frames. Although many were made, very few Louis XIV toilet services survive, and these are all ones that left France quickly, and escaped the very effective drives at the end of Louis's reign to get the nobility to donate their plate to help pay for the ruinous Nine Years' War and War of the Spanish Succession. Exiled Huguenot silversmiths helped to spread French styles in England and elsewhere. Once established, the characteristic types of pieces changed little, but their style followed general fashions in the decorative arts.
Heraldic decoration with the coat of arms of the owner was very common. This could be engraved, or on small cast pieces attached to the main vessel by bolts. This method made it easier to change the heraldry if a service changed hands to a different family, and is used on the Lennoxlove and other services. It is clear that many services were mainly made up from standard designs, perhaps often available from a silversmith's stock, and often built up taking some individual pieces from other silversmiths working with the same designs. Moulds were also lent between workshops. In the 18th century pattern books became important, initially mostly French, but later originating in England and other countries; these supplemented earlier drawings and individual prints. The sophisticated and complicated designs of the Rococo accelerated this process.
Except for heraldic animals, putti and decorative masks, figurative decoration was relatively unusual until the advent of porcelain or enamel in the 18th century, but a group of English services of the 1680s use the same plaquette designs, of uncertain origin, on the tops of round and rectangular boxes, as well as elaborate cast and chased decoration of foliage and putti. These are a service once in the collection of J.P. Morgan, now in the Al Tajir collection, the Calverly service in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and another. The English Sackville service of about 1750 has several pieces decorated with scenes of lovers in landscapes.
A few services survive in the very different technique of Asian filigree, with scrolling filigree decoration applied to plain silver beneath, or left as openwork. These are concentrated in the Hermitage Museum and Burghley House in England. They appear to come from China, and India in the case of one of the Hermitage services.
In the 18th century services continued to be made, with both the Rococo and Neoclassical styles lending themselves well to dressing plate. By the mid-century the large service was falling somewhat out of fashion, and fewer were made. The depiction of the toilette in William Hogarth's Marriage à-la-mode: 4. The Toilette, with a mirror larger than in any surviving example, is disapproving, and one of many satirical accounts and caricatures. At the same time the development of dressing tables with integral mirrors, and porcelain vessels, represented an alternative style of toilet equipment. The silver-gilt Neoclassical service made in London in 1779, now in Sweden is a late English example, and Philippa Glanville describes the Zoffany portrait of Queen Charlotte as showing "almost the latest flourish of the silver toilet service", although George III gave her another service a few years later.
Older services continued to be in demand, and the provenance of several surviving examples shows them being bought and sold, presumably for continued use. Several services were created from pieces by several different makers from a range of years, as can be seen from their hallmarks; for example the Lennoxlove service contains hallmarks from a period of some 15 years. A service in the Royal Collection was created in 1824–25 for Frederick, Duke of York, mostly using pieces a century or more old, supplemented by some contemporary ones and a new case.